Pablo let his arms drop. He looked puzzled. “Milly, all you are doing is running for senator, no?”
“Oh? Is that all?”
Pablo nodded sincerely. I guess sarcasm isn’t always easy to get in another language.
Just then, as we were coming out the north side of the cemetery, Alfie went by on the bus. Toot, toot, toot-toot-toot, toot toot, he honked when he saw us. I swear I heard our campaign song, “You say you wanna start a Ralstonlution,” in those honks.
The night of their country’s national elections, we went over to the Bolívars. They had hooked up the old TV we had given them to the cable network so they could get the Spanish-language channels and keep up with news from their part of the world. Dad said that Mr. Bolívar had been a nervous wreck all day, hanging a door wrong side in, picking up a panel before the paint was dry. The future safety of his two sons as well as of his country was riding on the triumph of the Liberation Party. How could the poor guy think ‘remodeled pantry’ at a time like this?
Until tonight, I had put their elections out of my mind. Like everyone else at Ralston, I was caught up in our own elections. Incredible as it seemed at first, it now looked like the borderliners might stand a chance. Jake’s enthusiasm was infectious. In a desperate move, Taylor and his pals were throwing a big dance with a DJ at his parents’ lake house the Saturday before school elections. Everybody— except us—was invited.
The Bolívars’ apartment was above the hardware store near the town green. Mom and Dad and Kate and I marched up the stairs with sodas, a bottle of wine, and a flan Mom had made using Señora Robles’s foolproof recipe. Nate, who whined that he didn’t understand the Bolívars’ fast Spanish, had been dropped off for an overnight at a friend’s house. A worried but gracious Mr. Bolívar met us at the door. We could hear the hyped-up voice of the Spanish newscaster behind him.
Mrs. Bolívar and Pablo were getting up from the couch as we walked in. The small living room seemed even smaller with so many of us trying to find a place to sit. Except for our hand-me-downs, the Bolívars hardly had any furniture. A small wooden crucifix hung on the wall at an odd level, probably where there had already been a nail. The whole scene was making me sad, the bare walls, the sparse furnishings, the Bolívars so apologetic and helpless. It reminded me of those TV specials about poverty in the Third World: some scrawny mother and her kids crouched in front of a tiny hut, looking frightened. I’d start thinking about my own birth family. Maybe they were starving, too? Maybe they were sleeping on a dirt floor with nothing but rags to wear? Soon I’d be feeling guilty, like I had deserted them instead of the other way around!
While the Bolívars talked with Mom and Dad in front of the TV, Kate and I sat with Pablo on cushions on the other side of the living room, which was kind of like his room.
“So what’s going to happen if the Liberation Party doesn’t win?” Kate asked.
Pablo sunk his head in his hands. I had never seen anyone our age do that.
Kate flashed me a panicked look. I could tell she felt really bad. “I mean, I’m sure everything will be all right.”
Pablo shook his head, ignoring Kate’s reassurances. “If the Partido de Liberación does not win, it will be un baño de sangre. What do you call it, a bath of blood?”
“Bloodbath,” Kate offered in a small voice.
Mr. Bolívar had been cruising through the channels for any news of the elections. Suddenly, he hit on an English-speaking channel that was highlighting the country’s elections. “Vengan, vengan,” he called us over to watch.
The anchorman was giving an overview of the history of the country. Stuff Mr. Barstow had gone over, but in a long-winded, textbookish way, hard to follow. But this was history in sound bites, easy to digest. The anchorman explained how the dictatorship had been put in place by the military, supported by CIA operatives and funds. Whatever that meant.
But about seventeen years ago, the people’s movement had gotten started in the mountains, the anchor guy continued. The dictator tried to eliminate them. A state of terror reigned. There was some old, blurry footage of helicopters shooting into a village; a church in flames; bound men being shoved into trucks. My hands felt on fire. My heart raced. Maybe one of those guys was my birth father. But how would I even know it was him?
Finally, the movement got the attention and support of some U.S. senators. Their faces flashed on the screen behind the anchor guy. Let’s hear it for senators! I thought. A bill was passed cutting off any further aid. Under pressure, the dictator agreed to hold free elections. The rebels came out of hiding to campaign. Support for their Liberation Party was overwhelming.
I swear I almost jumped up and cheered. I had gotten so caught up in the story of this struggle.
The anchorman now turned to a screen beside him for a live report. A leathery-looking reporter with a phony-sounding British accent was interviewing an official at election headquarters. The guy looked very uncomfortable.
“There seems to have been a huge turnout in support of the Liberation Party,” the reporter observed. It wasn’t really a question, but he stuck the microphone in front of the official.
“Actualmente, both parties have received many votes. We are showing the world that we have a democracia here.”
“When shall we expect news of the winners?” the reporter wanted to know.
The official looked over his shoulder nervously. The camera took in a flank of generals in dark glasses standing behind him. “We, at headquarters . . . some returns have been lost . . . we must have a recount . . . a delay of several weeks.”
Mrs. Bolívar lunged toward the television. “¡Criminal! ¡Mentiroso!” she screamed. She seemed to have forgotten she was sitting in an apartment in a small town in Vermont, not standing at the polling center in front of this official. But then, if she had been there, she probably would not have dared call him a lying criminal.
“Ya, ya, Angelita, cálmate,” Mr. Bolívar was saying. But he didn’t look all that calm himself.
The camera was now panning the tanks crawling down the streets of the capital. “We shall see if this nation is indeed ready for democracy,” the reporter signed off.
Mom had put her arm around Mrs. Bolívar, who was crying quietly now. Mr. Bolívar had turned off the TV and was pacing up and down the room. Poor Dad was staring down at his work boots like they might tell him what to say.
“We must have faith,” Mr. Bolívar finally spoke up. “For the sake of our sons, for the sake of our country. El paisito will liberate itself!”
Mrs. Bolívar glanced over at her husband, her face like that of a little girl just aching to believe some story she’d been told. But tears kept falling down her cheeks.
“Sí, Mamá,” Pablo agreed, his voice barely a whisper. “Like Tía Dulce says, ‘Milagros ocurren.’”
I didn’t know who Tía Dulce was, but maybe because Milagros was my original name, I felt like Pablo was talking directly to me. Miracles do happen, I told myself. All I had to do was look around me. I’d found a friend in the person I thought would ruin my life. After years of secrecy, I was opening up about my adoption. My impossible grandmother seemed to sort of in her own way be trying to apologize, and I was sort of in my own way trying to forget about her rejection. Pablo and his Tía Dulce were right. Miracles do happen. But sometimes, like that old needle in a haystack, you just had to find them.
The weekend before school elections, we drove down to Long Island on Happy’s invitation. For the first time ever, we were going to be staying in her mansion—even though renovations were not finished.
All the way down, Dad kept bursting into song, “Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go.” You couldn’t blame Dad for being in such a good mood. Grandma had apologized—something she’d never done in her life that Dad could remember. She’d told Dad and Mom, each on an extension, that all of us were her grandchildren. She loved every one of us the same. She had been wrongheaded and she was sorry. I
guess Dad tried to blame it on Mr. Strong’s bad advice, but Grandma took full blame. “Not at all, Davey. Eli Strong told me I was being a fool, and I should have listened to him.”
I guess I should have felt good, too. But now, with everyone being so cheery, like we were some big ole happy family after all, my old feelings returned. I couldn’t seem to forget that Happy’s unconditional acceptance had been on second thought. All the ride down, I stared out the window at the sunny spring day outside. Mile by mile, the trees kept getting fuller and greener, the air warmer, the sky bluer. But gray, wintery clouds hung over my heart. I scratched and scratched at my hands.
I think Mom and Dad sensed I was still brooding, and that’s why they started in on their Peace Corps stories. The happy beginnings of our family. Your family, I thought, your blood family. Any time now, we’d hear all about the orphanage, the baby in the basket, the memory box, Sister Corita with the seagull hat. Please, I thought. Somehow, today, I didn’t want them talking about my adoption.
“It was love at first sight!” Dad was recalling the first time he met Mom. “I get there and this very foxy lady at the Aereopuerto Internacional is holding up this sign that reads CUERPO DE PAZ, and boy, did she have a cuerpo on her!”
“What’s a cuerpo?” Nate wanted to know.
Mom and Dad and Kate burst out laughing.
“SOMEBODY TELL ME WHAT A CUERPO IS!” Nate hollered, his bottom lip quivering. He hated to be left out.
Mom was in too good a mood to scold Nate for yelling in the car. “Honey, cuerpo means body. In Spanish, the Peace Corps is called Cuerpo de Paz, Body of Peace.”
“But her cuerpo did not bring me any peace, no sir,” Dad continued. “Day and night, that’s all I could think about—”
“The Peace Corps might be going back soon,” Mom cut in, her prim Mormon genes taking the upper hand. Right before we had left, the Bolívars had called. The generals had tried to stop the vote count, but the commission of international observers had threatened sanctions. Crowds were turning up everywhere in support of continuing the count. It looked like the Liberation Party would win by a landslide.
“Bolívar already told me that they’ll probably be going down in August for several weeks,” Dad explained. “Maybe I should take some of that time off, too. How about we all go up to Maine and see the ocean. What do you say, kids?”
“I want to go to Disney World,” Nate pleaded. For his birthday last year, he’d gone with Happy, and he still talked about that trip in excruciating detail.
“Well, we’ll have to take a vote,” Dad said diplomatically. “Kate? Mil?”
Kate shrugged. “Whatever.” She never got what she asked for anyway: a week of shopping in New York City with the cousins.
I usually went along with the group plan, so I don’t know why I even said what I did. It’s not like I had thought a whole lot about it. “I want to go with the Bolívars when they go down.”
There was a sudden quietness in the car. Mom and Dad exchanged a glance, and then Mom turned around in her seat. “Honey, I can understand that you’d like to visit. But things are so unsettled there right now—” She stopped herself, her therapist training kicking in. “Maybe next summer we can all go for a visit?”
“That’s a terrific idea!” Dad looked in the rearview mirror to check on my reaction.
I sat there like some naughty four-year-old, arms crossed, shaking my head no. “I want to go now. And I don’t want to go with you guys. I want to go by myself.”
“But why?” Dad’s voice sounded hurt. “Honey, you’re too young to travel by yourself to a foreign country.”
“It’s not a foreign country. It’s my native country.” I felt like a horrible, ungrateful daughter, but I couldn’t stop myself. Until election night at the Bolívars’ apartment, I hadn’t ever thought a whole lot about the country. But now its struggle to be free seemed somehow personal to me. “And I wouldn’t be going by myself,” I persisted. “I’d be with the Bolívars. Mrs. Bolívar invited me.” Months back, during one of our shopping trips, Mrs. Bolívar had mentioned that someday she would like to take me to the mercados in her native country. This hardly amounted to a real invitation. But for some reason, right now it seemed like enough of one to me.
Kate, who’d been staring out her window throughout this discussion, suddenly turned to me, her face red and angry. “It’s my native country, too, you know?”
I was about to get into it with her—a tug of war over whose native country it really was. But Kate’s face was crumpling up. Horrible sobs were coming out of her mouth. I felt awful, like I’d thrown a rock at an apple on a tree and suddenly heard the crash of glass. What had I done to make my sister cry like this?
“I . . . I...” Kate could hardly talk. “I feel like you’re giving us up as a family.”
It was like hearing an echo from my own heart: Kate was afraid of abandonment, too! Before I knew it, I was crying, and then everyone in that car was sobbing, and here we were pulling into Happy’s driveway, and Happy herself was coming down her front steps toward us, waving and smiling happily.
We put on a pretty good show of the happy family arriving at Grandma’s. Later, Mom and Dad came into the bedroom Kate and I were sharing, and we all collapsed into a big, tearful family hug. “We understand, we understand,” they kept saying, and I kept apologizing, “I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry,” though I didn’t really know for what. I still felt what I felt, only now I was determined not to show it.
At dinner, Happy sat me next to her as if to prove that I was no different from any of her other grandchildren. Except for Della, Grandma’s housekeeper, serving us, the whole night could have been a repeat of Happy’s birthday dinner. Aunt Joan, Uncle Stanley, and the cousins drove out from the city. Mr. Eli Strong was back. Knowing how he had stood up for me made me want to hug him. But shy as we both were, it would have been doubly embarrassing to do so. Instead, I complimented his cuff links, small, gold happy faces like those smiley yellow ones people stick on envelopes. Even that made him blush and stammer thanks.
That night, Kate joined the cousins next door for their usual marathon gossip session. Grandma had put us in three adjoining bedrooms, and Nate had his own pullout couch in the pool room—the place is a mansion. Anyhow, I bowed out. “I’m real beat, guys,” I explained. Glances went around the room.
I lay in bed, unable to sleep, hearing the occasional laughter or dramatic rise and fall of voices through the wall. A while later, Kate came into our room. She sat on the edge of her bed in the dark, like she wanted to say something.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
Brilliant, I thought. At least I had an excuse for not being good at heart-to-heart stuff. I wasn’t the real child of a therapist. “Kate,” I said, sitting up in my bed. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I could see her faintly shaking her head. Then, after some more tense silence, she spoke up. “I just want to say one thing, Mil. We don’t have a perfect family, okay? But it’s not the worst, okay? So, please, please, please, think about what you’re doing before you go and...”
“And what?” I challenged. “What is it you think I’m going to do, Kate?”
“I don’t want to talk about it!” Kate sounded fierce and scared, both. “I don’t know about you, but I would like to get some sleep tonight.”
“Kate, I swear, nothing is going to come between us—”
“I said I didn’t want to talk about it!” Her voice was so loud. A second later, there was a knock at our door. The cousins. “Everything okay in there?”
“We’re fine,” Kate called out. I’m sure the cousins were not convinced. But very unlike them, they didn’t barge in. Maybe Kate had talked to them. Great, I thought. That made me feel even less like I belonged in this family.
I lay there, helpless and also angry. I wanted to tell Kate that she was the one creating the separation between us by refusing to even let me talk. But it’s like what Pablo had to
ld me his grandfather had said. Things of the heart, you couldn’t rush them. Kate would come around when she was ready. I just hoped I would be ready then, too.
We tossed and turned. I don’t think either of us slept a whole lot that night.
Sunday morning, while everyone lounged in the sunken living room, recuperating from one of Della’s huge breakfasts, I slipped into the library to be by myself. I reached up for To Kill a Mockingbird—we had read it last fall in English class—and a whole panel of painted books popped out. I was snapping it back in place when I heard steps behind me.
“I’ve been wondering where you went to!” Happy was wearing a colorful robe she called a caftan. It made her look dressed up even though it was basically a long nightgown. She sat down in her red velvet Queen Something chair and patted for me to take the love seat in front of her.
I sat there, feeling awkward, not knowing where to look. When I finally did glance up, Grandma’s eyes were looking straight at me.
“You have the most beautiful eyes. you know that, Milly? They don’t hide anything. They show me how sad you are.”
Don’t you dare cry! I ordered those eyes. Or I’ll be really pissed at you! “I’m okay, Grandma, really,” I managed.
Happy let out a weary sigh. “No one in this damn family ever tells me the truth. But I’m going to tell you the truth, Milly. Your grandma can be a real bitch.”
The shock of hearing her say so stopped whatever tears had been congregating at the corners of my eyes. Grandma! I almost laughed right out.
“I’ve made a lot of stupid mistakes,” Grandma went on. “Just ask your father. He’ll tell you.” She paused as if looking back over a lifetime of mistakes. “You might not believe this, Milly, but we have a lot in common. I didn’t really have parents. Poor Mother, losing all her family. She couldn’t let herself feel, no less be somebody’s mother. Father was always too busy. I had parents but I didn’t have them. And everyone wondered why I never smiled!” She smiled now, a wise, sad smile. Then leaning forward, she took my hands in hers and whispered fiercely, “You’re one of my babies, and that’s all there is to it!”